Cardiac Services

Being a wise health care consumer

If you've looked into making a change in your health care lately, whether it's a new doctor, a decision about a hospital or a change in insurance coverage, you'll discover there is much information available. How to decide? Convenience and cost are important, but when it comes to specialized medical care, quality stands head and shoulders above other considerations.

Defining quality is something else again. One helpful place to start is the YNHH Quality Reporting web site. There we provide information about our commitment to quality, how quality scores affect you, who measures quality and what our results are.

In addition, YNHH created a department, The Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), whose mission is to evaluate the effectiveness and risk of various medical treatments. CORE has taken a national leadership role in developing methods to evaluate quality of care in treating heart disease. Its staff analyze feedback from patients and physicians and collect detailed information about the outcome of every patient who undergoes a cardiac catheterization, angioplasty or coronary bypass surgery at the hospital. All of this is done to improve the quality and effectiveness of care our heart patients receive.

Yale-New Haven has also been recognized by U.S. News & World Report as among the nation's best hospitals in cardiology and cardiac surgery.

In addition to accreditation and attention to quality, there are other quality indicators to help you make your decision: experience, reputation, research/teaching, resources and patient satisfaction.

Additional resources:

• The Joint Commission

Next page: Experience counts

Cardiac Services home page

Last revised: May 22, 2007 (dh)

Home page URL: http://www.ynhh.org

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